Center for Language Science/SLEIC

Principal Investigator

Michele Diaz, Ph.D., (mtd143@psu.edu) CV
Michele Diaz is the Director of Human Imaging at the Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences, Imaging Center, and an Associate Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, & Neuroscience at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to coming to Penn State, Dr. Diaz was the Assistant and then Associate Director of the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. Her research focuses on the behavioral and neural representations of language and how these representations differ across the lifespan. She has also investigated the contributions of the right hemisphere to language through her research studying figurative language, discourse, and novelty. Finally, she worked for 10 years on the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) focusing on best practices in neuroimaging and multi-site experiments. She combines behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging measures to examine the relations between cognition, aging, and the brain. Dr. Diaz received her B.A. from Penn State and her Master’s and Ph.D. from Duke University. She lives in State College with her two favorite people (husband Wilson and son Nico) and the best dog in the world (sweet Sadie).